The project adopted a ‘programme approach’ meaning thereby to develop a feasible step by step programme of actions to support the aquaculture extension network in the country. The step undertaken and planned for future are the following:
Step 1. Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) Survey was carried out before the project actually started in April, 1992, by an experienced national team which in consultation with provincial and district authorities identified the target villages and target farmers to start with in all the 10 provinces covered under the project.
Step 2. Start of the project made in April, 1992 after the international staff (Chief Technical Adviser) joined at the main center in Vientiane, and later two UNV-Specialists reported on duty in June, 1992 to take care of the two sub-centers at Savannakhet and Xiengkhouang. Thus the main center at Nong Teng in Vientiane Prefecture and two sub-centers at Savannakhet and Xiengkhoaung were established. An orientation workshop was organized promptly to invite contact extensionists from the 10 provinces to introduce them with the project strategy and the project management personnel (national and international).
Step 3. Monitoring visits to Target Farmers (TFs) started after collection of base-line data on aquaculture practices adopted by them and their socio-economic condition. The aim has been to set up demonstration sites for various farming systems, being developed by the TFs, who were categorized according to their attitude, performance and social acceptability by the government. The TFs were classified as A (progressive), B (enthusiastic), C (interested) and the TFs A were expected to improve as ‘Model Farmers’ (A +). The effort of the project has been to improve the performance of A to A + ; B to A and C to B ; and to screen their performance over years to assess the true model farmers from the dummy model farmers (showing lot of interest initially and later phasing out after receiving the basic inputs from the project). This process of screening is carried out throughout the implementation of the project and even after that by the national authorities. During this process of monitoring, various aquaculture technologies have been put to field test and based on the success of these tests suitable technology packages are being developed for various farming systems in different agroclimatic conditions and for farmers at varying socio-economic strata. The ‘Case Study’ profiles of target farmers (including model farmers) form the base for developing field-tested methodologies for the farmers.
In addition to monitoring of TFs, the project has also reached other farmers through village-level training programmes and these trained farmers are termed as ‘contact farmers’. From these contact farmers, also, the project shall find out TFs, categorized according to their attitude and performance, and thus try to develop more and more of ‘model farmers’.
Step 4. This is the most vital step which aims at organizing the compatible ‘model farmer’ into ‘Farmers Organizations (FOs)’. Thus model farmers and FOs would support and sustain the propagation of improved aquaculture technologies among the farmers in their respective areas and also suitable demonstration sites would be developed for the various farming systems. The district-level extensionists shall play the pivotal role and need strong support. Having laid down the strategy for aquaculture extension planning in general terms, the next Chapter III is devoted to present the actual analysis and results of the field technologies tested/implemented so far in the provinces of Xiengkhouang, Vientiane Prefecture and Savannakhet.
